Abstract We propose the Representation-Dependent Contact Hypothesis (RDCH), a viability-centered framework for analyzing interactions between adaptive systems of unequal structural complexity, formulated as a foundational contribution to the emerging discipline of structural xenoarchaeology. The central claim is that contact is not determined by technological capability alone, but by the intersection of two constraints: viability compatibility and representational alignment. Within this framework, detectability is not an intrinsic property of emitted signals, but a relational property defined by whether external structure survives the observer’s condensation and viability filters. We model perception as a constrained mapping: R = C (E;, FV) where external structure (E) is transformed through system architecture () and viability filtering (FV) into an internal representation (R). Under this formulation, there exists a nontrivial class of structures such that: E 0, C (E) noise implying the existence of structural non-recognition. We argue that early human systems—characterized by low structural rigidity and high representational plasticity—may have admitted limited forms of interaction with more complex external systems. Such interactions, if present, would not persist as explicit technological artifacts, but as compressed representations encoded in symbolic systems, mythological narratives, and architectural regularities. The apparent absence of comparable interaction in modern systems is interpreted as a consequence of increased representational rigidity and tighter viability constraints, which reduce the admissible intersection space between systems. RDCH reframes archaeological anomalies and ancient textual corpora not as anomalous cultural products alone, but as potential instances of representation-constrained signal compression arising from partially unrecognized interactions.
Roman Lukin (Sun,) studied this question.